Architect with Nahant link had preservation focus

NAHANT – Seeing the stonework, stained-glass windows and the soaring space of Ellingwood Chapel as designed by architect Ralph Adams Cram, one can understand the building’s place on the National Register of Historic Places.But members of the Nahant Historical Society learned Sunday that Cram not only created historic places through his designs; he also created historic places through his advocacy.”He was not only doing new things and projects, but he took the money he earned from these buildings and put it to preservation work,” architect and author Ethan Anthony said Sunday. “He started a very early preservation movement.”Ralph Adams Cram, 1863-1942, was born the son of a Unitarian minister in Hampton Falls, N.H., and became one of the most successful and influential church and college architects in America.His buildings grace campuses from Boston University to Princeton University to University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and from St. Paul’s School to Rice University, with features that Anthony, who now heads the firm Cram founded, said “became almost the language of church architecture.”Anthony, principal architect of Cram and Ferguson Architects in Boston, described how Ellingwood Chapel in many ways uses this language.The chapel has a central, square, Norman-style tower that creates an open bright space in the center of the building. A large nave with pews is in front of the tower and is illuminated with a rose stained-glass window above the chapel door. The records and other official items of the chapel are located in a small chancery behind the tower. But Anthony said the ideas manifested in this building’s architecture are also of historic note.Like many architects in his day, Cram was inspired by his travels to the great buildings of Europe. But Anthony said Cram did not just visit the celebrated and treasured cathedrals of Paris, Rome, London and other capitals on the typical itinerary of a young architect in Europe.Anthony said Cram became particularly interested in the English abbeys destroyed during the Reformation in the reign of Henry VIII. Cram’s book “The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain” catalogued his visits to these buildings – often buildings on private land and filled with wandering sheep, Anthony said – and inspired many to be preserved and, now, managed by (UK) National Trust.Meanwhile, Cram had his own buildings to build.”He wanted to build the abbeys again in the United States,” Anthony said.Ellingwood Chapel may not be on the scale of a medieval monastery, and Cram later fell out of fashion with his distaste of modernism. Anthony mentioned Cram was not too pleased that his appearance on the cover of Time magazine was accompanied by a story that essentially described him as a “Luddite” representing the “other direction” of a progressive architecture.But the Nahant Historical Society’s efforts to maintain the building’s original lighting fixtures and windows, polish the original pews and repair the stonework continue Cram’s legacy in building and of preservation.And those modern cushions on the pews? They’re for the preservation of visitors’ muscles and joints.